Cloning a mammoth: Totally gonna happen

Back in August, a team of scientists uncovered a woolly mammoth's thigh bone, which had been so well preserved in Siberian permafrost that it offered the possibility of creating a mammoth clone. And this weekend, a team of Japanese and Russian scientist announced that, yes, they are going to do this thing. Mammoth clones. They're coming.

Scientists believe they can take DNA from the bone's marrow cells and use elephant egg cells and surrogates to birth a mammoth baby. Will those elephant surrogates be the world’s coolest elephants? YES. Also, they will sort of be their own great-great-great-great-great-grandmas.

Obviously this is awesome. And some researchers were already getting into Pleistocene rewilding as a way to balance our ecosystem. The idea is to reclaim wild lands with the descendants of prehistoric megafauna, by putting oh, say, elephants where mammoths used to live. You know, elephants — those pale copies of ACTUAL MAMMOTHS which are used only when ACTUAL MAMMOTHS can’t be provided. We can’t wait to see Pleistocene rewilding happen now!

Alternatively, Pleistocene rewilding fans can wait for the planet to get warmer, and maybe oversized creatures like mammoths and giant snakes will resurge on their own! And then Titanoboa and Mammoth Clone can fight.